Update: On The Road With Al & Ivy: The Anthology Vol. 1 (2016-2018). Work on the revised Second Edition due out in 2024 and upcoming excerpts on X in my X (aka Twitter) Subscription Section.
When On The Road With Al & Ivy Vol 1 was published, it was made clear that it was a compilation of Blog entries that were sometimes written weeks apart.
In other words, it was a collection of writings during the period that showed my state of mind and what I saw but wasn't a chronological narrative.
I did say that the second edition would incorporate other written entries from social media and GoFundMe entries, which would fill in the gaps between the blog entries and provide a sense of what daily life was like for a homeless person. That took a while to collect.
I began work on the newly revised eBook last month but have decided that it would be interesting and fun to do it as Kindle Vella style in episodes in the X Subscriber Section. Some of the first completed pieces will be run on my regular X timeline for free.
One reason is that there are different ways to incorporate the additional material, and I'd like to try a format that combines the original text with commentary. I hadn't intended to add the latter but reader comments for the current eBook show that continuity is a concern, and after reflection, I've realized that they're right.
The format will be simple; the original text with the date and then commentary to add details and context. If it relates to a blog entry in the eBook, I'll add the reference to look it up on KU.
These pieces, which will be in the revised eBook, will have the working title of On The Road With Al & Ivy: The Journal Entries, and I'll use the current book cover as the attached pic.
That might seem like a lot of preliminary detail, but I've set my subscription timeline to show a preview of each item. Having descriptive and standard titles lets those checking out these entries better understand what's there.
The first couple of entries are below with cropped images of the social media entries which should be interesting reading with the commentary.
I think it is relevant also, as the homeless problem seems to have gotten worse, not better, and the discussion in the media has moved more towards depicting people experiencing homelessness as a single entity or headline.
My book was intended to be "a face," and I think adding detail will make it more so. The body of data could use more "ordinary" stories to give the problem a more human face.
There's a lot of homeless struggling to survive, not just waiting around for help or taking drugs, and while not entirely overlooked, most of the attention is on the media images.
The eBook is still on KU and can be read for free by members. I'll try to schedule a free week soon, also.
- Al Handa
X: @alhanda (Boogie Underground Media)
On The Road With Al & Ivy: The Journal Entries (2016-2018)
Introduction:
The Journal Entries begin on June 25, 2016. The format will have the actual post as an attachment, and each will have commentary for extra detail and context. The title and book cover used are for this series. The cover will actually be a new design when it officially comes out as the Second Edition.
The posts were on Facebook or GoFundMe, but I've removed the headings. Each has the date in large red text so I could recognize each image in the various apps used To edit. There’ll be some redacting in future posts for legal reasons.
The first entry is short and almost innocuous because I was in shock and reluctant to talk about my situation.
I became homeless in March, and the money had run out after a few months. A lot of things had happened, and by this date was suffering occasional hallucinations from sleep deprivation, so I was cautious in tone and trying not to come off as unhinged or panicked in my post.
The car had just died the night before, and the best advice I got from the other homeless was that replacing it was a good thing to try first since it used an electronic key.
The reference to "3.7 miles" was the walking distance to the Cadillac dealership, and my statement about walking two miles a day wasn't about simply wanting to stay in shape. My prescription for high blood pressure meds had run out a month earlier, and the only thing I could think of to replace it in the short term was to exercise every day.
I had to carry Ivy for most of the two-mile distance because the average temperature in that area was 90 degrees. She couldn't walk further than a hundred yards in that heat. It was hard carrying a twelve-pound dog and backpack, but I figured the more strenuous the workout, the better.
The reference to UB40, specifically the one led by Ali Campbell, is because the admins of their fan site saw my posts and urged fans to support me. Also, my thanks to Twitter (and Facebook) users were because they, many of whom still follow my account, were helping the best they could.
Without that support, I'm unsure how things would have gone two weeks after my situation became critical. By the time of the first blog entry (in the eBook) on July 30, I was stuck on a side street with a dead car.
On June 25, I had a car that had just stopped running, and I didn't know if the problem was severe. After observing the homeless scene for a few months, I knew my situation would worsen without a running car, which it did by the next post on June 30.
- Al Handa
Note: These entries are working up towards the first chapter in the eBook "On The Road With Al & Ivy: The Anthology Vol. 1 (2016-2018) on Kindle Unlimited," which begins on July 30, 2016. I'll run at least three before the series moves into the Subscription section. Also, some of the incidents I’m describing are alluded to in the novel version on Kindle Vella.
On The Road With Al & Ivy: The Journal Entries (2016-2018): June 30, 2016 (2nd of 3)
Note: These pieces are part of the Second Edition of "On The Road With Al & Ivy: The Anthology Vol. 1 (2016-2018)," due in 2024, and are published here under the working title of The Journal Entries. There's a complete explanation of the project in an early posting.
Intro to June 30 Entry:
This is the second installment of three that'll be published on this timeline. After the third, the series will continue in the Subscription section.
The Entry is an attached image file like before. What follows here is my commentary.
June 30 was a good day with some hope. I was hired for a job on the night shift, which made it possible to safely leave Ivy alone in the car (with other homeless in vehicles keeping an eye on her). I thought that it was a good first step, and it was.
Note: I've redacted the business name and will do it on any word or term that would identify it or the exact location of these incidents.
I didn't realize that several other homeless around me already worked in retail, some for years, and didn't earn enough to get into an apartment because of the low vacancy rate and the real estate boom in this region.
Even more importantly, I didn't realize that even if the Night Manager knew I was homeless, that didn't mean upper management would treat me differently.
What I found out later was almost all of the others who worked had to keep their situation a secret. Many had been fired from previous jobs as soon as it became known or soon after. The usual perception is that many companies are eager to hire people experiencing homelessness. It's more complicated than that.
I would soon find out that the official company policy of being accepting of people without housing didn't mean much to the upper management of this business, but that will be covered in later Journal entries.
The last sentence was the actual situation; buying a new key didn't work. That meant that the problem could be the electronic ignition, which, even on an old Cadillac, was costly to replace.
The Entry was short because the car wasn't running. There was no way to recharge the old iPhone used to type out these entries (my phone was smaller and only turned on if I needed to make a call). Donations had come in, but other than some food for Ivy and me, I didn't dare spend it because there was a future repair bill that would possibly be a lot more than I had at the time.
However, on this day, getting any job was good news. The effect of even a little hope couldn't be underestimated. It was devastating when things completely fell apart over the following two weeks, but hope kept me mentally strong enough not to give up because of days like this, I could tell myself that wins were still possible.
That doesn't mean there was a Hollywood-style scene where I stood up and shouted to the Heavens that the fight wasn't over yet. By the following Journal entry in July, it was evident that I was in profound trouble.
- Al Handa
August 4, 2023
On The Road With Al & Ivy Short Take: Great Chapters In Literature: Marcel Proust's Overture from "Swann's Way."
If you want an example of a writer that A.I. would find nearly impossible to duplicate, it would be Marcel Proust. The first chapter feels like he drew random thoughts or subjects out of a hat and then wrote a chapter that connected those in an interesting stream of consciousness that, as rambling as it might seem, gives the reader a clear sense of his personality.
The opening "Overture" walks a thin line between flightiness and nailing the feat of putting on paper the moment-to-moment images and thoughts of a human mind.
Most psychological novels are highly structured, with well-constructed observations that are insightful, but it's not how the mind works as one's senses move from one stimulus to the next. Literature can be the product of input and reactions laid out and organized with reflection, observations, and context added later in the first written draft.
That doesn't mean Proust didn't add reflective passages or philosophical observations to his book; it's just that he didn't write the chapter as a structured piece like Joyce's "Ulysses" (which was a different type of work even if both were psychological).
A man who sees a woman walk by isn't necessarily going to contemplate the complexities of the species' survival. He might add a meditative passage later in a WIP that adds detail to that brief glimpse, but that's not how our minds work in real-time.
My first reaction to this chapter was amazement at his imagination until I realized that it was an actual train of thought and not a virtuoso assembling of imagery. We're used to books that describe elaborate internal dialogues (which, of course, can happen in spurts in everyday life) but rarely one where the observations and thoughts are genuinely unfiltered. Proust may think differently, but his mind works pretty much like anyone else's.
His best quality, besides genius, is honesty. By that, I don't mean it's full of juicy confessions but that he's willing to be quite ordinary, following a path that includes the trivial and banal. As a result, the passages seem to have more life and vivacity, which is also a credit to the translator, C. K. Scott Moncrie.
It was very much a chapter written by a human being.
- Al HANDA
On The Road With Al & Ivy Mini-Blog: Thoughts about A.I. generated books.
I was reading an article about the flood of A.I.-generated books on Amazon K.U. and how those are reducing the KNEP payout for legitimate authors. One writer quoted an "expert" who said authors would leave in droves unless Amazon handles the situation.
No, they won't leave in droves.
Kindle Unlimited is an ecosystem that too many writers depend on for income and, just as important, the opportunity to get published works in front of an established audience.
Until somebody comes along and gives authors the same market and access, K.U. is it, and it's better to root for Amazon to try to fix an unprecedented situation than just get all butt hurt and threaten to leave.
In my eyes, these stories are just part of the obsessive hype about A.I. which ignores the real issues that could kill off K.U. and make people leave; rampant piracy and plagiarism.
A.I.-generated books are, at least at the moment, an automated form of plagiarism by people who would otherwise steal by other methods. Even the writers claiming it's just an experiment or exploring the new tech know that the algorithm gets its material by scraping published work.
Those who claim it's just a new technology like the printing press aren't real artists. The printing press revolutionized distribution like the internet has, but you still had to compose a work.
There is a place for A.I. in writing, particularly in genres like nonfiction articles or news, where recycling and borrowing is standard practice. I've seen the same Beatles or Led Zeppelin articles for decades.
Also, news organizations specializing in quickly whipping up pieces on trending people and events will embrace A.I. if they haven't already. There'll be the problem of the tech being used to generate a flood of articles to manipulate trends, but that's only a concern for those who are discerning about their clickbait reading.
One thing that might eventually happen; A.I. bots will be required to generate a bibliography on any nonfiction work.
As far as novelists are concerned, A.I. will initially rip a lot of people off. The fact that Amazon can't control it isn't necessarily due to a lack of caring but because of the overwhelming number of people using bots to create instant books.
The problem of A.I. books will be an ongoing battle. Just right now, technology has shifted the balance of those manipulating the system. That won't last forever, though.
However, as long as society tolerates cheating and winning at all costs, the best that can be achieved is a reasonable level of deterrence.
I must add A.I. tech is being pushed downwards, not up. In other words, even the conflict between content providers and A.I. firms isn't about the individual contributors who often work for free. It's a fight between management teams who may not care if A.I. replaces people.
There is nuance. A.I. will be like most tech innovations; people won't have much choice. It'll become a fact of life, so areas will evolve where it's an accepted tool. Since users won't have any sense of history, somebody will eventually publish a work that plagiarizes someone famous or who has the means to sue, which'll help move copyright law into the next era. Lawsuits probably create more change than legislators.
An author putting out an A.I. generated book might make money on it but will have to become a shadowy figure constantly changing identities to evade TOS enforcement.
I can't imagine a real writer would want that kind of literary career. For sure, some won't care as long as they make money, and in the United States, there'll be those who admire such unprincipled behavior.
Even a hundred years from now, a person who uses A I. to generate a whole book isn't going to be called an artist or writer. That title is still going to mean something even then.
On The Road With Al & Ivy: Excerpt from August 2020.
Note: I've begun editing a Vol. 2 of the Blog Compilation. This one will contain edited and revised versions of all of the literary essays on this blog site from around 2020 to the present. Here's a revised and edited intro to one about childhood.
Childhood is seen as a time of innocence, but kids often spend it lying, cheating, stealing, and inflicting pain on each other; while parents do their best to contain such impulses until adulthood when there's a time and place for everything.
It's a time for learning about your place in the world. Look at any toy section, and it's evident that sexual roles are defined early on, and as our perception of the world becomes more mature, we realize the world seems to teach ideals and symbols but not reality. Living happily ever after becomes women doing the cooking on Super Bowl Sunday and men getting to fart anytime they want (which is oversimplifying for the sake of pacing, but within the minimum standard for truth on the Internet).
A child's world, created from curiosity and imagination, is often seen as a transitional phase before assuming the adult mantles of responsibility, conformity, and money-grubbing. Luckily, the grown-up world also teaches ambiguity and hypocrisy to help reconcile virtue and the real world.
If your sense of curiosity survives into adulthood, it becomes a search for truth, and any subsequent disillusionment is just a temporary phase in the discovery process.
Studying history is the passion that guided my life's journey, from the shiny symbols of childhood to real life, from sacred truths to ambiguity.
It's not easy for children to conceptualize the idea of the past, which is filtered by adults deciding what's suitable for young minds. They avoid violent or erotic content (except in video games and cable TV) or explaining which political party is associated with Satan. Such matters are considered too advanced, so instead, we're taught about stuff like dinosaurs, a politically neutral subject that doesn't need to be taught with any accuracy.
That's as far as it went until I could at least read a comic book, which by fate was the old Classics Illustrated series, which transitioned my love of history into the world of literature, albeit with a lot of pictures and very little text.
The first inspirational book was Church's version of Homer for children. I checked it out so often from the school library that the librarian hid it to ensure others could enjoy it until she realized I was the only kid who read it.
I didn't check it out so often because the book was so good, but because, at first, I couldn't understand it. It was above my reading level. It was a process of enjoying the illustrations at first, then gradually being able to read them later. I realized that illiteracy locked the door to this exciting world, so improving my reading skills became a priority.
I was eventually able to read three or four grades above my level. I could have cared less about it (as an achievement) except that it finally made old historical classics available to me and, with it, a fuller view of the world.
August 2020 Entry
ontheroadwithalandivy.blogspot.com/2020/08/on-roa…
On The Road With Al & Ivy Mini Blog: Announcing The New Subscription Section on X
I'm happy to announce that the Subscriber Timeline on X is now running. As promised in the earlier announcement, I won't constantly pester everyone to buy a subscription, but a description is necessary.
The rate is set at .99 cents a month, which is paid through the Google Play store and Apple. The nice thing is that you can buy a monthly subscription or, if you like the content, stay on as a regular subscriber. It's up to you.
I hope and will deeply appreciate it if X users try it for at least a month or two and see if it's worth staying on.
What delayed everything was I couldn't see what the Subscriber TL looked like until it was approved. Once I saw it, it was like the regular free stream of tweets in chronological order. Thinking about how the premium content could be loaded took a little time.
Rather than load all the material in at once, I've decided to tweet it at regular intervals with standard headings so it's obvious which are blog tweets and other stuff like the serial fiction. I intend to load new content at least five days a week.
As of now, it's mainly two features; the edited essays that will be in a future eBook "On The Road With Al & Ivy: The Literary Essays (2018-2020), and around four of my current Kindle Vella books, which can be published elsewhere as long as it's not free. The monthly fee makes it premium.
By August, there'll also be audio and video features loaded.
The Literary Essays will be from the Blog entries during the two years of 2018-2020. The original format was like a magazine, but such issues won't work as chapters like the current eBook On The Road With Al & Ivy Vol. 1.
The Blog became eclectic, so it'll be more readable as discreet pieces and not huge 4500-word essays. Each entry has a clear title and description of the topic(s) covered.
The Vella Serial book chapters will be loaded regularly until each is complete. One reason for including these is that most who read the chapters preferred it not to be in Vella, and secondly, these stories were only available in the U.S.
The latter is a big deal as some of my oldest Twitter friends are from overseas, and it was frustrating that they couldn't read my serials.
The initial serials will be "I, Ivy," "Queen Khleopahtra," and "Knee Deep In Glory" (which will be loaded best chapters first as it's not chronological).
I picked the three that were the least linear and were written in such a way that one could read the episodes out of order, like a regular situation comedy or cartoon.
I'll add more next month, but some of the serials will be taken off Vella and published for free in the regular Twitter timeline. Ones like "The Lost Gospels Of Murgahtroyd" and "Boogie Underground Think-Tank" were formerly regular blog features, so they are being made free again.
I'll post regular updates on what's being loaded into the subscription section, so if you don't subscribe now, maybe something will come up that'll make it worth trying it out.
I'm sure you've all seen how richer the content on my account has become after moving the On The Road With Al & Ivy blog here. That won't change. I want this account to be one everyone wants to follow and enjoy.
The Subscriber Section is an enhancement but also an attempt to make this feature-laden account sustainable, so I hope you'll try it.
Even if you don't, I'll appreciate all support via retweets and word of mouth.
